Dr James Hansen recommends breeder reactors that convert nuclear 'waste' into 1000 years of clean energy for America, and can charge all our light vehicles and generate "Blue Crude" for heavy vehicles.https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/recharge/

So environmental biologists are starting to recommend that we move certain species to more fitting climates. I don't want to trivialise the threats to certain agricultural and ecosystem areas. Climate change is a beast that has required stuff to move over around 800 years in the past ice-age cycle, but our anthropogenic climate change demands they move in just 100 years! What's worse, our towns, roads, but mostly our agriculture gets in the way. But there are environmental groups looking at the feasibility of moving species to new areas and transplanting and growing out new ecosystems in those more viable areas, like sinking old ships as artificial reefs but then helping them along with threatened Great Barrier Reef corals, etc.

Dr James Hansen recommends breeder reactors that convert nuclear 'waste' into 1000 years of clean energy for America, and can charge all our light vehicles and generate "Blue Crude" for heavy vehicles.https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/recharge/

Dr James Hansen recommends breeder reactors that convert nuclear 'waste' into 1000 years of clean energy for America, and can charge all our light vehicles and generate "Blue Crude" for heavy vehicles.https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/recharge/

Cog wrote:I guess parts 1-4 of "When will the mass dieoff begin?" did not give us any answers. LOL

I have said it many times. Scientists have calculated that we have topsoil left for approximately 40 years. Aquifers are also going to be empty approximately in the same time scale. So overall I think it is safe to say that things are going to get very ugly approximately 30 years from now. Simple as that.

Cog wrote:I guess parts 1-4 of "When will the mass dieoff begin?" did not give us any answers. LOL

I have said it many times. Scientists have calculated that we have topsoil left for approximately 40 years. Aquifers are also going to be empty approximately in the same time scale. So overall I think it is safe to say that things are going to get very ugly approximately 30 years from now. Simple as that.

Don't design your life around believing in this narrative.

I don't disagree with the premise but between now and then are many years still of abundance and it is a complete waste to focus on this.

A parable I have shared in the past. The magnolia tree leaning over on the edge of a cliff is adding biomass every year, the roots embedded in the rocks will give way at any moment. Tenuous at best and yet every spring in the meantime the tree bursts with a riot of blossoms.

Such is the fate of Kudzu Ape in the 21st century.

If we could all just learn to be like the magnolia.

Instead we both deny the truth of our inevitable fate at the same time as hysterically chasing empty and meaningless pleasures.

Our species is worst than yeast!

Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Apeblog: http://blog.mounttotumas.com/website: http://www.mounttotumas.com

There is very little “information” on the internet. Once you start trying to look up some specifics you find the depth of ignorance. I recommend reading, especially older books, of different times. It gives a different perspective, not of the echo chamber.

A good place to start is with HG Wells “Outline of History”. I think it’s even available as a free download.

At the same time that most species are and will be shrinking in numbers, more and more frequently down to nothing... most will also be literally shrinking...individual member getting smaller and smaller as the planet heats up.

Researchers predict the average (median) body mass of mammals specifically will collectively reduce by 25 per cent over the next century. This decline represents a large, accelerated change when compared with the 14 per cent body size reduction observed in species from 130,000 years ago (the last interglacial period) until today.

In the future, small, fast-lived, highly-fertile, insect-eating animals, which can thrive in a wide-variety of habitats, will predominate. These 'winners' include rodents, such as dwarf gerbil—and songbirds, such as the white-browed sparrow-weaver. Less adaptable, slow-lived species, requiring specialist environmental conditions, will likely fall victim of extinction. These 'losers' include the tawny eagle and black rhinoceros.

... "The substantial 'downsizing' of species which we forecast could incur further negative impacts for the long-term sustainability of ecology and evolution. This downsizing may be happening due to the effects of ecological change but, ironically, with the loss of species which perform unique functions within our global ecosystem, it could also end up as a driver of change too."

Findings are published in detail in the journal Nature Communications.

... The future defaunation explored here also shows parallels to historic extinction events, such as the late Quaternary extinctions, which likely disrupted species interactions, reduced long-distance seed dispersal, and fundamentally restructured energy flow and nutrient cycling through communities.

Moreover, a growing number of studies support the hypothesis that the late Quaternary extinctions had cascading effects on small vertebrates and plant community biodiversity and function, resulting in ecosystem shifts comparable in magnitude to those generated by climatic fluctuations

There seems to be a consensus that humanity, or at least Western cultures, have lost brain processing power over the last 20 generations or so.

I’d die a quick google on the following phrase, too many articles to quickly summarize.

humanity.getting dumber

(And a couple of provocative quotes)

You might first wonder if it's genetic. Maybe some change in the makeup of a particular group being studied has caused the decline (crudely, you could call this the 'dumb people have more babies' hypothesis). But that seems to be ruled out by the new research, which shows that even within single families IQ has declined. Marginal Revolution blogger economist Tyler Cowen sums up what that means: "In other words, we have started building a more stupidity-inducing environment."

In an article called Our Fragile Intellect, Crabtree argued that human intellectual fitness has been on a slow but steady decay for 3,000 years, and it is due to our relatively easy lifestyle that has freed us from a state of 'survival by thinking.'

Looking at human fossil evidence for the past 200,000 years, Lahr looked at the size and structure of the bones and skulls found across Europe, Africa and Asia. What they discovered was that the largest Homo sapiens lived 20,000 to 30,000 years ago with an average weight between 176 and 188 pounds and a brain size of 1,500 cubic centimeters.

They discovered that some 10,000 years ago however, size started getting smaller both in stature and in brain size. Within the last 10 years, the average human size has changed to a weight between 154 and 176 pounds and a brain size of 1,350 cubic centimeters.

While large size remained static for close to 200,000 years, researchers believe the reduction in stature can be connected to a change from the hunter-gatherer way of life to that of agriculture which began some 9,000 years ago.

I like the theory that the decrease in human brain size in the late Pleistocene occurred because humans domesticated dogs. Once primitive man delegated to dogs the job of tracking animals by smell, then those parts of the human brain dedicated to deciphering smells were no longer necessary and the human brain shrunk.

I fully expect the same king of thing to happen again now that we've got cell phones. The parts of our brain dedicated to navigating and answering trivia questions can be replaced by Siri on a cell phone, so those parts of the modern human brain are now superfluous and will eventually disappear in future generations.

Plantagenet wrote:I like the theory that the decrease in human brain size in the late Pleistocene occurred because humans domesticated dogs. Once primitive man delegated to dogs the job of tracking animals by smell, then those parts of the human brain dedicated to deciphering smells were no longer necessary and the human brain shrunk.

I fully expect the same king of thing to happen again now that we've got cell phones. The parts of our brain dedicated to navigating and answering trivia questions can be replaced by Siri on a cell phone, so those parts of the modern human brain are now superfluous and will eventually disappear in future generations.

You know when you see the same loss of skills across a suite of human activity that something deeper is going on here. In addition to the lower IQ that is emerging we see announcements like how the new crop of surgeons are less skilled in dexterity because of how much time they are in front of digital screens

Roger Kneebone, professor of surgical education at Imperial College, London, says young people have so little experience of craft skills that they struggle with anything practical.

"It is important and an increasingly urgent issue," says Prof Kneebone, who warns medical students might have high academic grades but cannot cut or sew.

"It is a concern of mine and my scientific colleagues that whereas in the past you could make the assumption that students would leave school able to do certain practical things - cutting things out, making things - that is no longer the case," says Prof Kneebone.

I also notice this with many of our general ecotourists who do not have a history of being much in nature. They are incredibly clueless in the forest when we guide them. They have this non specific interest in nature from a more cerebral "idea" and then when we take them into the forest it is like hand holding them. Their love of nature was born more of watching BBC or national geogrpahic nature documentaries on TV or the internet. We have gotten to the point that we bring laser pointers with us to point out where the bird or monkey is. And sense of orientation is often completely lacking. These are fundamental skills most children learn playing in the fields and forests of their youth that you can see is totally lacking.

This degradation has been going on for generations but the introduction and integration of the digital world has only enhanced and accelerated with degradation.

KJ sees these degradations as the price you pay for being part f this new digital hive mind. I on the other hand see this degradation as de evolution.

There is something almost karmic, that exactly when humans will need to be sharpening their skills as a result of the upcoming constraints which will require more self reliance we see an emerging crop of humans that are all like babes in the woods as dependent on modern technology as GMO corn is dependent on industrial agriculture.

Reminds me of the famous proverb that we are what we eat!!

This is a deep deep irony.

Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Apeblog: http://blog.mounttotumas.com/website: http://www.mounttotumas.com